Adelbert, a "Magi of Hermes" look at intellego and Astrology

Games Discussion Ars Magica
121

I had one season where I'm not sure what I thinking with my notes. I decided to change course and grab another spell from lab notes.

But first here is a charged device that Adelbert will create to trade for the lab notes.

rego mentem lab total is
11 Magic theory +7 rego +14 mentem +2 intelligence +3 aura +3 planetary magic for a total of 35
He enchants two small ceramic faces as charged devices using periapts, one with four charges and one with three

The text is more or less stolen directly from panic of the trembling heart. You'll notice that there is more very little guidance of what overpowering fear means. I think a sensible storyguide would be able to adjudicate it without too much trouble. But I'd still prefer to say more. Also I think the name is quite bland.

Adelbert trades the 3 charge item to a redcap in exchange for a lab text for trapping the fire, because he's deathly afraid of complete darkness and being able to take a fire out of his pocket in the case of emergency is something that he's been wanting his whole life.

122

Thinking about where he would have been likely to botch an suffer a twilight experience I've got to go with either casting an a hostile aura or the rituals to increase Claritas' intelligence because of the vis involved.

Flipping a coin and ..

While investigating a charge that a magus had hired thugs to attack another member of the order Adelbert double botches while casting peering into the mortal mind and has a twilight experience
his warping score is lets say 4 and his intelligence is 2. he's gone for a season but he comprehends the twilight. I'm folding the warping into the 2 points per year from the quick advancement.
He gains the twilight scar where those who are targeted by his spells often remember pleasant sights from their past.

123

aging:
4 rolls even (+6 for age -4 for ritual -2 for living conditions) this gets him four years worth of apparent age
Then he binds the familiar and does 6 years at -3 with the addition of the bronze cord this gets him one aging point in stamina and four years of apparent age increases
Finally he has 5 years at -2 (because he's now in his seventies): three years of apparent age increases

124

I'll post the familiar later

125

the familiar has been bound for 11 years at this point and has not yet helped with lab work. I'll say that Adelbert has somehow got the vis to raise the familiar's intelligence to 0. I'm also going to give the familiar 10 points per year as I did with the ranulf advancement.

So 110 xp gets her the following
Artes Liberales 1
Magic Theory (assisting in the lab) 3
Brawl to 5
Intrigue (rumor mongering) 2
Guile (lies of magi) 1
Folk ken (magi) 1
[strike]Folk ken (covenfolk) 1[/strike]
magic Lore (magical animals) 1

126

I'm liking this a lot.

That said, I renew my concern for a Queasitor with low scores in CoH, OoH Lore, and/or Intrigue. Given his new Reputation with the Queasitors, it fits, though. That said, an excellent Astrologer could make a darned good investigator when put on the case, so I'm waffling a bit. Maybe he is one of the Queastors' in-house "tech guys". Sort of a "Q" for the "real Queasitors... :slight_smile:

The way I see this guy right now is that his House-mates might look at him as a good resource if you tell him exactly what you want him to do for the real investigator of whatever issue of interest. I base this on the ease factor descriptions in the the Core Rules. If modestly difficult things take a 12 to clear, then, on average, this 75 year old magus would only clear a 9 or 10 on average in CoH or Intrigue means that he is going to me more unsuccessful than successful. An Hermetic criminal is intelligent, wiley, and works hard to hide is Hermetic crimes. Thus, one could assume, the investigation and prosecution of them would be difficult requiring good investigatory and prosecutory skills. Right now, if I were playing the lead Queasitor for this guy's tribunal:

-- I would only assign him the tasks of checking covenant charters and local relationships, and other "fix-it ticket" type issues as an independent operator.
-- If someone is holding his hand, then more serious issues would be assigned.
-- If I wanted tools for the other Queasitors, he'd be my first go-to for Intelligo-related enchantments or special Intelligo-related casting tablets

Where I am waffling is that this guy has the potential to be great -- once he knows where to look and how to look at it. The spells are certainly lining up in that direction and the Astrology Mysteries can make a HUGE difference.

That all said, maybe this is a misperception in my case. The way I have been seeing it, a person isn't really a master in thier trade unless they can generally do modestly difficult things successfully most of the time they try to. To me, that means a Level 6 or 7 in the Ability in question and a positive score in the associated Characteristic.

Again, I really like everything else about this guy and think the Familiar is fantastic. As an investigator, he just strikes me as more Barney Fife than Sherlock Holms. As a magus focussed on his own interests irrespective of his House's, I think he's great.

Am I out of line? What is another way to look at it?

-K!

127

He's got a high perception and awareness and he now has the magical skills to look at spell traces and the magical sense specializations to see when things have been messed with magically. His code of hermes skill his order of hermes skill , his lore skills and his intrigue skills are all quite weak and he has no guile skill at all.

It would be tough to find a magus who has the magical abilities to collect all of the information about a case as well as Adelbert at this age. But there are still lots of folks who might be better at putting together why things happened.

He isn't a perfect tool for the Order, he is a magus who is pursuing his own goals. Looking at true linages there are several common specialties for Gurnici: hoplite, advocate, investigation specialist, Terrae magus. He is certainly an investigation specialist and he is doing something about his lack of knowledge of the order and of the code. How high do you see things needing to get? At the moment I'm looking at code of hermes and Order of hermes lore going to 3 and intrigue going to 2 and then letting them sit. I gather you think that he should have these scores higher give me a number that you think reflects the amount of skill necessary to prevent himself from harming his career due to ignorance and I'll shoot for it (or present a counter argument if I think that its way too high).

Adelbert's opinion with his intellego focused mindset is; if he is able to get all of the facts in every case then he can get by with hitting the books to look up the tribunal rulings and historical precedents that he isn't familiar with with his only moderately deep understanding of code and culture.

A quote that is of relevance in this is from true lineages p 68

I see Adelbert gaining accolades for his thorough investigation work but having made a few Hermetic code gaffes that have embarrassed the Q's and have him at this point in his career hitting the books so it doesn't happen again. He isn't going to make the outer counsel in the next fifteen years but in the fifteen year stretch after that I have him taking on more house duties. What sort of skills does he need to have this not break suspension of belief for you?

128

That seems fair. I guess that if he were being played by another player in my troupe as a PC rather than an NPC I'd want him to be as he is rather than taking xp away from something else to put it in to intrigue or Code of Hermes. Of course, he's really an NPC not a PC so this argument doesn't bear too much weight.

Yikes! a level 7 in code of hermes is an additional 125 points. At 30 xp per year that's over four solid years of work doing nothing else. then having to do similar with order of hermes lore and intrigue, that's not going to fit into my plan. I could perhaps get them up to 4 or perhaps 5 and later on I've got him scheduled to play with mentem stat boosting spells (well, much later on).

I was considering making Claritas, the familiar, do a deep study of intrigue (In my present notes she eventually gets to brawl 8, that might be excessive), they can communicate telepathically and she has superhuman powers of perception even without her magical abilities. Would that make a personal study of intrigue less pressing?

129

You make some good points and I completely agree on the spells. And, yes, he doesn't have to be a House enthusiast to be interesting as a magus. Queasitors are allowed to have thier interests (as are Tremere, for that matter)

Perrhaps this is a point where the 30 points per season rule is a problem.

From a strict mechanical point of view, I find it entriely believable that there is a good solid CoH summa out there amongst the Queasitors (say, L3Q10 or a truly great L3Q15). Two or three seasons of reading in the early part of his career and he's got the basics. Reading the proceedings from his Tribunal and a neighboring one (call it two tractatus of Q7 each) every 7 years = 56 more points over a 30 year span. Add in one Grand Tribunal with an associated Q8 tractatus commenting on the CoH, and you put him right in striking distance of a CoH score of 6. A 5 in any Ability is pretty good. Not truly "master-class" in my mind (see previous post for reasoning) but no slouch relative to the Hermetic population. Again, strictly mechanical, and outside the rules you selected for this run so probably not appropriate.

As for Intrigue, I love the idea of Claritas being the suspicious one and the Queasitor being a little ... generous. I'm less familiar with the Familiar advancement rules. RoP:M seems to imply that anything with Might is very hard to teach anything new. That said, If Claritas had an Intrigue of 6 and enough CoH to frame the issue (say, a 2) for the magus, that would be downright cool from my point of view. A Brawl of 8 would mean that Claritas is really focussed on being a guided weapon (or REALLY good at dodging). Backing that off to 5 (or even 4, given his QIK) would still make him effective and free up all sorts of points/time for other studies.

OK, enough kvetching. I like him targeting at least a 5 or 6 in CoH so, from the standpoint of his House, he knows what to go after, why to go after it, keep himself out of trouble with his own house while doing it, and succeed more often than not. Claritas as the private eye (in more ways than one) and the master spy has all sorts of potential. If he were to get the ability to change shape into a human and/or a snake and some Stealth, even better.

Sorry to be a hassle on this. I'm sure most of this has to do with how I see a Queasitor operating in Kurt's Vision of the Order (tm). To me, high CoH + moderate OoH Lore + high Intrigue == the ability to see a very small dangling thread and carefully following it to unravel dangerous plans and plots. Other people's visions are undoubtedly different.

So, the team balance you propose is great. If you go with that, and get them to be much better than average but maybe not entirely master-class in the Abilities as you propose allocating, my personal coginitve dissonance will vanish...

Best regards,

-K!

130

Why does Claritas have 2 folk ken scores? I like the duo it makes with Adelbert, BTW :slight_smile:

131

I thought folk ken was a group of linked skills like profession, and craft . I'll have to go back and look at the rules.

132

They do imply that. There is a sort of loop hole to get a magical creature a minor quality worth a large chunk of xp, but I don't like to acknowledge its existence for this thread. There are provided rules to use vis to reduce the penalty to experience point gain. the 10 xp per year implies access to a fair amount of vis (If I recall correctly, and I might not, Claritas could get 2 xp from a q15 source , like a skilled instructor, and another 8 xp from the same source coupled with six pawns of vis).

When it was discussed earlier, it came up that the lack of xp advancement for familiars was an unintended and unlooked for consequence of the RoP: Magic rules. Choosing 10 xp per year is technically possible from the rules as written (especially if you use the loophole that I'm not fond of) and more closely tracks what I gathered was what most folks did. (The unintended and unlooked for consequence of letting familiars learn unimpeded was that they quickly got their magic theory scores well into double digits).

133

It started off with wanting to get an increased dodge score but looking at that fierce personality trait and not wanting her to be just a magic theory buff to increase lab totals, I had her moving perhaps a bit close to monty python's killer rabbit for a serious game but it brought a smile to my face.

134

Glad I am recalling that properly. I think we allowed an exemption for familiars for exposure experience in our saga and I think another appropriate exemption would be those abilities related to its essential nature. If, for example, a weasel is Sneaky, then allowing Practice experience in that area (such as Stealth) would be reasonable to my way of thinking. In the case of Claritas, this would seem to imply that as an Accomplished Flier (in Qualities), he would be allowed to accumulate lots of Practice experience in Athletics which, for a magical eagle around for some long period of time, would be in keeping with the character.

Just a thought.

As for the Monty Python reference about killer bunnies ... I'm smiling too. Using the above reasoning in game, Claritas could definitely get there.

135

In the moderately distant future Adelbert wants to take an apprentice and at the end of apprenticeship he'll create a new longevity ritual. To this end he studies teaching a bit, gets up to speed on his last art that has a score <5, and puts a bit of time into creo and corpus. He spends a large amount of time really putting in the effort on intellego to eventually get tenth magnitude spells in the realm of practicality. He does an initiation for Celestial magic this is the most valuable virtue that the Magoi of the star have to give.

Here is ten years worth of xp for Adelbert (300)
Code of Hermes to 4 35
Magic theory to 9 (+1 xp) 29
Magoi of the star lore 5 25
aquam to 5 15
intellego to 26 80
vim to 16 45
mentem to 16 30
Muto to7 7
Perdo to 7 7
Leadership 1 5
Corpus to 9 9
Creo to 8 8
Terram to 5 5

Here is 100 xp (10 years) for Claritas
Intrigue to 3 15
magic theory to 4 20
Brawl to 6 30
Awareness to 7 35

edit : That looks awful, the last number on each line is the experience point cost.

136

The degree of Venus in the magoi of the Star initiates the virtue of Celestial magic. Imitating a major virtue known to the mystagoge is a target of 21.

I allocated two seasons for this initiation:

The initiate travels to Cologne cathedral on Christmas day where he confronts the remains of Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar in the shrine of kings. (Ok apparently these three have only been there since 1164. If I advance Adelbert another 60 years after this path and someone fits him into a game set in1220 or just a few years afterwards, then he was one of the first to perform this initiation). From this point he mirrors their path to Bethlehem by traveling to his own birthplace.
When there he must he symbolically acts as a beneficial astrological influence resolving issues without announcing his presence (some magi, like Adelbert,, do this using mind reading spells and invisibility but merely keeping a low profile, not telling others who you are or letting them know what you are up to is sufficient). The actions that the initiate takes should be performed at astrologically appropriate times.

The initiate provides three gifts to the place of his birth. Mirroring the gift of gold the aspirant finds some issue or difficulty involving the rules of the area and through his effort makes things better for people (the people can be the rulers or those who are ruled. Mirroring the gift of frankincense the aspirant must accomplish a task or resolve an issue involving the church. Mirroring the gift of Myrrh the aspirant must succeed in bringing something in the area of his birth more in to line with the desires of those that have died.

In accomplishing this the aspirant unlocks the virtue of celestial magic but they also mystically bind themselves to the place of their birth. The location of the initiate's birth forevermore acts as a permanent arcane connection to them.
+3 special place and time
+6 complete specified quest specific to the initiate (or should that count as multiple quests?)
+3 looses a minor virtue
+3 minor ordeal
that leaves six points to be covered by the mystigoge

Does that look acceptable to everyone? The arcane connection that can not be gotten rid of or really controlled as a minor flaw was taken from the Merinita chapter of Mystery cults.

137

Now his intellego vim lab total is sufficient to allow for the creation of a defensive spell that he's wanted for a very long time
Intellego 29
Mentem 16
Intelligence 2
Aura 3
Magic theory 11
Familiar 5
Laboratory horoscope 3
similar spells bonus (See the Strike) 5
Early riser 1
for a total of 75
So in two seasons he'll develop this

138

It's been a while I've been away busy at work, busy with kids and I suffered through a bouts of both FFG's Deathwatch and Star Trek Online.

I also was confronted with the fact that I didn't pack the 45-60 year period with as much good stuff as I was able to come up with when advancing Ranulf, but to be fair, I think that specializing in a technique is a bit more constraining than specializing in a form (perhaps especially comparing intellego to a physical form ie not mentem, imaginem, or vim).

Two seasons for Opening the Intangible Tunnel at level 30
Two seasons for Voice of the Waters InAq 35 as voice of the lake with a +2 size modifier
One season for Converse with Plant and Tree
One season for Aegis of the Hearth at level 30 from lab notes
One season for Scent of Peaceful Slumber
One Season to Learn Sight of the Sigil from lab notes (that's the level 50 target vision InVi spell from True lineages it is something that Adelbert has been working towards his whole life)

This leaves eight seasons

139

Adelbert spends two seasons inventing this spell at level 30. It is a pretty good reason to use hours instead of sun.

Six seasons left

140

One season for this

Does +3 seem appropriate or too high or low?